Facebook Marketing & Privacy Issues

May 12, 2010
 

Bruce, Susan and Virginia have a bone to pick with Facebook. The social network announced a number of changes at the f8 developer conference in April, including its plans to create Open Graph and a redesign of connections made throughout the service. The show hosts are concerned about the diminishing promise of privacy and user’s ability to control personal data on the service. Several security holes have been discovered since the platform changed, and some U.S. senators have even asked the social network to remove new features that may invade user privacy.


David Turner, technical lead of Facebook marketing firm Brand Glue, talks to Virginia about Facebook news feed optimization and ways to engage users to become fans on the social network. In the Wall Street Journal’s The Black Art of Writing Facebook Updates, Brand Glue shares recommendations for crafting optimized Facebook updates that entice interaction and could help updates show up on more users’ news feeds. David also discusses customized Facebook landing tabs and ways to use Facebook to drive conversions on a business’s Web site.

Then Aaron, Susan and Virginia consider the effect of W3C validation on search engine optimization. The question of how validated code plays into rankings was the source of lively debate in the WebmasterRadio.fm chat room a few weeks ago. Aaron expresses that W3C validation likely doesn’t have a role in search engine rankings, based on his own testing and experience. However he believes there is considerable overlap between SEO best practices and validated code and that W3C validation is an important part of designing a spiderable and accessible Web site.